Digital Arts Expo 2016

About

About

Reflecting California Institute of the Arts’ experimental ethos, the Institute’s Digital Arts Expo rolls out its latest projects integrating cutting-edge engineering and computer science with visual and performing arts. Highlighting new student and faculty projects made over this last academic year, the DAE’s exhibitions and performances run from early afternoon to late evening in the ROD Music Hall, MOD Theater, Main Gallery, Wild Beast, Machine Lab, and Lund Dance Theater. The DAE reflects the latest practices in technologically sophisticated arts, involving viewers in interactive experiences, bringing artists’ perspectives to computer games, forecasting future directions of digital performance, animation, and projection mapping, and exploring the latest in software and hardware as a means of commenting on our increasingly connected world.

CalArts has long been at the forefront of arts and technology practice, and is uniquely positioned to develop such a curriculum. The Institute’s Music Technology curriculum is unique in the world, engaging students in custom software design, circuit design for human-computer interfacing, and the use of robotic mechanical systems and artificial intelligence in musical and artistic practice. CalArts’ School of Film/Video, with its renowned animation program, has been a global leader in innovations in computer graphics and advanced digital media technologies. And the newer Digital Arts Minor program offers opportunity for inter-disciplinary collaboration between students of all the schools within CalArts and provides students with the skills and knowledge to create digitally driven works of art.

On May 5, the public is invited to experience the Digital Arts Expo’s exhibitions and concerts on the CalArts’ campus featuring creatively adventurous and technologically imaginative new work from across all disciplines of the Institute.

Directors & Producers

AJAY KAPUR

Ajay Kapur is currently the Director of the Music Technology program (MTIID) at the California Institute of the Arts, as well as the Associate Dean for Research and Development in Digital Arts. He is also Founder and CEO of Kadenze, the Creative Arts MOOC. He received an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in 2007 from University of Victoria combining computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, music and psychology with a focus on intelligent music systems and media technology. Ajay graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and Computer Science from Princeton University in 2002.

COLIN HONIGMAN

Colin is a new media and sound artist whose work focuses on interactivity and augmented spaces. He is an alumni of the CalArts Music Technology BFA and MFA programs. His MFA thesis focused on the idea of “Next Music” which he conceived as music made in/for/with the augmented space. Currently he is working as a Creative Technologist at the ed-tech startup Kadenze, teaches in the Music Technology and Digital Arts programs at CalArts, and actively collaborates on with other LA artists.

Madeline Falcone

Madeline Falcone is an event producer and violinist based in Los Angeles. She plays regularly as a founding member of the Isaura String Quartet and as a freelance performer focusing on new and experimental music. As a producer, Madeline is active in LA and New Orleans. She has served as Associate Producer of the Digital Arts Expo since 2014, and upcoming events include work with the Greater New Orleans Youth Orchestras and the Ojai Music Festival.

Student Creative Directors

Jackie Aldern

Jackie holds a BA in Studio Art from California State University, Fresno, and is presently an MFA2 in Film/Video and Integrated Media at CalArts. She currently works in moving images and interactive/experiential installation – exploring relationships between ephemerality and cultural ritual. She draws from a background in contemporary dance and several visual art practices to investigate movement, space and time in all of their conceptual and physical appearances. Jackie makes a point of sharing processes and inquiries with others in pursuit of hybrid forms of filmmaking / performance / knowledge / etc.

James Anderson

James Anderson is a musican, artist, and software developer currently in the Music Technology program at California Institute of the Arts, as an undergraduate. He is interested in musical composition, performance, signal processing, and audiovisual art.

Julianna Bach

Julianna Bach is a Los Angeles creative pursuing a BFA in graphic design at California Institute of the Arts. Her practice has included branding and identity systems with a developing curiosity of the intersection of design and technology.

Bryanna Brock

Bryanna Brock a graduate from Booker T. Washington Arts Magnet, will be graduating from California Institute of the Arts in 2016 with her Bachelor of Fine Arts in dance and a minor in digital arts. During her time at Calarts Bryanna has invested deeply into her own choreographic career and has produced several works here at CalArts. In 2013 Bryanna began to expand her practice beyond just dance and into the realm of Digital Arts. Bryanna’s hope is to interweave her choreography and digital arts skills into her own contemporary dance company, which she plans to launch shortly after she graduates.

Kamari Carter

Kamari Carter is a Producer and Performer from LA. His works are a blissful intersection between harsh and dystopian.

Zach Crumrine

Zach Crumrine is an MFA2 in the Music Technology department. Although mainly working as an electronic composer/performer and sound engineer, he also explores his practice through other digital mediums. This is the second Digital Arts Expo concert he has engineered / curated, and the fourth he has participated in as an artist. Come thru to the Main Gallery stage and lose yourself. *airhorn*

Trey Gilmore

Trey Gilmore is a video artist who’s works primarily exist within the world of live performance. He focuses on how the spectator/art gap can be closed allowing for a more intimate experience. He is interested in how technology has effected the way we as a species communicate and how this evolution of communication influence the communication of art practice.

James Hurwitz

James Hurwitz is a Los Angeles based multimedia artist. His current work focuses on audio and video production, light sculptures, programming, and interface design. He is currently attending California Institute of the Arts in the Music Technology and Digital Arts programs. His work has been presented at Capitol Records, The Banff Centre, Infinity Gallery, Lightning in a Bottle Festival, Burning Man and California Institute of the Arts.

Sohee Kim

Sohee Kim (or Kim Sohee) is a graphic designer who likes to make stuffs, watch stuffs, look at stuffs, think about things and research on things. All the activities listed influence her work and taste in design, in a very good way.

Kelsey Long

Kelsey is currently receiving her BFA in Dance-Choreography & Performance from California Institute of the Arts. Recent performances include a self-choreographed solo at the Seoul International Dance Competition where she was awarded first place in the Senior Women’s Contemporary Dance category. Kelsey is currently interested in exploring new ways to break down the invisible wall that separates audience from performer. She also continues to investigate how her works can uncover, evoke and or affect her viewers emotions, memories, fantasies. Kelsey is also interested in investigating new, unique ways to merge dance, light and sound into one cohesive, interactive experience.

Tyler Lumm

Tyler Lumm is an artist based in Los Angeles. His work examines multi-identity and its anxiety. His work can be found on iambecome.net, a parafictive character blog and yourefollowing.us, a collaborative work with his long distance partner exploring digitally mediated relationships.

Kozue Matsumoto

Kozue Matsumoto is a koto performer based in the LA area. She has been internationally performing classical, contemporary, experimental, and improvisational music as well as collaborating with various form of arts. Her current interest is to build an interface on the koto to expand the koto’s potential beyond producing traditional sounds. such as creating processed sounds/noises, animations or collaborating with other instruments, performers, and digital arts through technologies.

Laura Sofia Perez

Laura Sofía Pérez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico and is currently an MFA Film/Video student at California Institute of the Arts. She received her BFA in Fine Arts from Parsons: The New School for Design and has exhibited her work in San Juan, New York, and Buenos Aires. She was selected as SUB30 Artist in Residence at Fundación ACE in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2014.

Nathan Villicaña-Shaw

Nathan Villicaña-Shaw is a new media artist whose works explore and question our social-personal relationship with technology. Interested in defining new boundaries for human-circuit interaction, Nathan works blend circuit bending, hardware hacking with creative coding and programming. Nathan spends most of his time creating interactive installation art, composing, hacking and working as a Python developer and creative technologist. Nathan is a MFA candidate, and BFA alum, from the MTIID department at CalArts. His research focuses on developing and working under the philosophy of OpenHacking; a discoverist framework for art creation via the exposure of electronic systems for subversive injection.

Sam Shiu

Sam Shiu, born and raised in the Windy City, is a third-year graphic design student in the BFA program at CalArts. Her intrests revolve around Sunday morning cartoons, video games, japanese animation, and interface culture.

Davy Sumner

Davy Sumner is a composer, percussionist, improviser, and electronic artist working in Los Angeles, CA and Eau Claire, WI. He has performed at the wulf. (LA), Automata (LA), REDCAT (LA), The Cedar Cultural Center (MN), Lynden Sculpture Garden (WI), and The Eaux Claires Music and Arts Festival (WI).

Jazmin Urrea

Raised in Compton for 9 years of her life before residing in Watts, Urrea attended CSU Long Beach where she obtained a BFA in Photography with a Minor in Human Resources. Urrea’s work is known for having “her face on everything,” because she turns the camera on herself. Her images are not self-portraits, rather she uses herself as a vessel to challenge cultural pressures Latina women face. These events illuminate themes of identity, race, and gender through the use of exaggerated stereotypes in her work. Urrea is currently working in Los Angeles and pursuing her MFA in Photography and Media at CalArts.

Ashwin Vaswani

Ashwin Vaswani is a graduating creative coder studying Music Technology & the Digital Arts. His works focus on web art, web apps, & digital art. He produces art in the form of code, electronic music with voice, & photography. Interested in connecting ‘the internet of things’ to modern art forms, Ashwin tries to find the balance between user experience & artistic representation. Proficient in modern web languages such as Ruby & PHP, his goal is to become a web developer who can find the balance between art & reachability. He supports open source software, privacy, & net neutrality. Currently, he is interested in data visualization using the web.

Monique Wilmoth

Monique Wilmoth is a Los Angeles native and a third-year graphic design student in the BFA program at CalArts. She enjoys working with both digital and analog processes – focused on type design and apparel design. She has done work with Career Artist Management and Universal Music Group.

Guanyan Wu

During her four-year undergraduate study of communication specialized in creative media, she received broad and interdisciplinary trainings covering mass media, visual culture studies, digital graphics and video production. She is currently an MFA graphic design candidate at CalArts. She enjoys making interesting stuff and always thinks about how to solve problems using graphic design.

Andrea Yasko

Andrea Yasko is a second year graphic design student at CalArts from Millbrae, California. Her focus is image-making, motion, illustration, and typography.